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Friday, 21 November 2014

Adsense, Blogger and YouTube

(An off-topic post) The trials and tribulations of enabling Adsense ads on both YouTube and Blogger.

Summary: This describes how I enabled my blog for AdSense when already showing ads on YouTube - something others seem to have had difficulty with. It required registering my own top level domain because you can't use an AdSense account created with YouTube for hosted Blogger blogs. The post is off-topic as far as the blog goes, but the tale may be helpful to other bloggers. Apologies to regular Yorkshire Memories readers, but at least the ads might earn me a bit of pocket money.

***

I enabled AdSense on my two YouTube channels in August 2014. I wish I’d enabled it sooner considering I’ve had nearly 400,000 views over several years.

I also started this Blogger blog in August 2014 with the aim of linking it to AdSense. However, for the first three months the “Sign up for AdSense” button in the Earnings section was greyed out. Reading various forums, it seemed I might need to wait until the blog was 6 months old with perhaps as many as 40 posts before my blog would be eligible (I found Get Google Adsense Approval! 7 Things to Do That Really Work very helpful, despite it being more oriented to WordPress than Blogger).

I was therefore pleased to find the “Sign up for AdSense” button became active after just 3 months (exactly to the day) and only 12 posts. This may surprise some people who have been waiting for longer. It may be significant that (1) I am in the UK and (2) all my posts are very nearly text-only with between 1000 and 2000 words per post.

Another problem was that when the “Sign up for AdSense” button first seemed to be active, it actually wasn’t. All that happened on clicking it was that a “Loading” message appeared briefly and then nothing else. Forums indicated this was a fault that was being corrected. After a few days it worked properly, and took me to the next screen.

As I already had an AdSense account created from YouTube, I used my Google account sign in. After this my Blogger Earnings page provided a link to my AdSense dashboard.

When “Show ads on blog” was set to “Yes”, then the “About Me” panel on my blog moved down to leave a blank space where the sidebar ad would go, and there was another space between the first two posts for another ad.

I thought I’d succeeded but the ads remained blank. I thought I just had to wait for them to activate but after a week they were still blank.

Again referring to the forums, it seems you can no longer
place ads on Blogger using an Adsense account that was initially set up with
YouTube. This was confirmed by a banner on my AdSense dashboard:

“Your AdSense account
is enabled only to show ads on YouTube. If you want to show ads on a different
site, you’ll need to provide us with the URL of the site you want to monetise.
You can do this via a one-time application form.”

In other words, if the AdSense account was accepted through YouTube you can only use it with YouTube. To use it anywhere else you have to apply for an upgrade but this can only be done with a top level domain name.

Again, looking around the forums, there seemed to be two possible things I could do.

(1) set up a second AdSense account just for Blogger. I have not tried this. It would involve creating a second Google ID, and would mean that any ad earnings from Blogger would go into a different AdSense account from the earnings from YouTube. A second ID would also violate the AdSense terms and conditions. As my earnings will be little enough as it is I want them all to go to the same AdSense account. In fact it’s hardly worth my while at all except for a sense of satisfaction. To be precise, my YouTube channels have earned just £1.41 over three months!

(2) register my own top level domain and assign this to the blog so that instead of a blogspot.co.uk address my blog would have its own address, and then I could apply to upgrade AdSense using the one-time application form. This is what I decided to do.

I wanted a private domain registration to protect my name and address details. After looking at various options I decided to register www.taskerdunham.com through Namecheap.com with their free WhoisGuard subscription. It cost me $10.87 (£6.90) for one year’s private registration. It was very easy and became active immediately. If I had not wanted anonymity I could have done it elsewhere for much less than that. I know others have done it for free using a .tk domain.

The next step was to alter my custom domain www.taskerdunham.com to redirect to my Blogger blog. This means in effect that my blog has two addresses, (i) taskerdunham.com and (ii) taskerdunham.blogspot.co.uk – it will still be found at both URLs so I don’t have to worry about telling any existing readers of the change.

So in Blogger I went to Settings Basic and select “Set Up A Third Party URL” and entered www.taskerdunham.com under Blog Address.

I clicked “Set up a third party URL” which produced a field to enter my new domain name www.taskerdunham.com and then clicked the Save button.

DONT PANIC! -this immediately produces the following Error 12 message which lists two CNAMES (canonical names used in domain registration): [DO NOT CLICK SAVE AGAIN JUST YET]

All this means is that you have to redirect your custom domain name so that it points at your Blogger blog. You have to go to your domain registrar's website and alter the settings by entering the two CNAMES

www ghs.google.com
cfo5........ gv-ii ......dv.googlehoosted.com

Different domain registrars will have different procedures and you may have to search around for instructions and examples. Blogger has a help page for the common ones. In my case I signed in to my Namecheap account and found their useful help page “How do I use my domain with my Blogger account?” showing exactly how to do this and where to enter the two CNAMES (there is a video as well, but not specific to setting up Blogger blogs). In case anyone else opts for Namecheap, here is my completed screen accessed by the “All Host Records” link:

I only entered the CNAMES - I did not touch the '1800' field or the other fields underneath this section.

Having done this at Namecheap, I returned to Blogger and clicked Save on the screen shown above, which produced the following screen listing the two URLs for my blog. Here I also clicked Edit next to www.taskerdunham.com and checked a box which seems to cover the possibility of someone missing the www from the front and typing just taskerdunham.com. I don’t know whether that’s essential because most browsers seem to handle that anyway.

Success! All seems to work. My blog can be seen at www.taskerdunham.com
and www.taskerdunham.blogspot.co.uk and www.taskerdunham.blogspot.com and it still
works if the www. is omitted as well.I
can also still edit my blog and make new posts by signing in to Blogger with my
Google ID in the usual way.

But I'm not finished yet. Now I have to apply to AdSense for approval for my top level domain using the one-time application form. Actually it's just a field you fill in.

You then get a Thanks for applying screen and have to wait. It also says that “In order for your application to be approved, you must place your ad code on one or more webpages at the URL you entered in your upgrade application. Note that blank ads will be shown until your application is approved.”

Well, ad codes and blank ads were already on my blog because the “Show ads on blog” box on the third screen above was still ticked and there were still blank spaces on the page. I could see these had been set up in the My Ads section of my AdSense account as below. I don’t think you need to do anything else at this point other than wait. However, just to make sure, I did click the +New Ad Unit button and created some new code, which I placed at the end of my blog using Layout – Add a Gadget – HTML/JavaScript on the Blogger menu and copying and pasting the new code into the box that appears. But I doubt you have to do this.

Some forums say it can take a few days or even a month for the AdSense upgrade to be approved. In fact mine happened within two or three hours. I got the following email, and WOW! as you can see, the ads are on the blog!

I suspect that if I do not want to maintain my custom domain, then after a year I can revert my blog back to being a hosted account, and ads will continue to appear. I have yet to find out.

LATER

1. I find that on the AdSense website, the ads for the blog sidebar and between-posts are now listed as status Idle. I think this is because no on has clicked them for a week - well they couldn’t could they because they haven’t been displaying. This is nothing to worry about. They become active again if and when someone clicks them .... later still - they are now showing as active again.

2. I also now find I can generate AdSense code and put it on my free Weebly site. That is now displaying ads too. I just have to wait a few days now to check whether they are showing as impressions on AdSense.

78 comments:

I wanted a private domain registration to protect my name and address details. After looking at various options I decided to register www.taskerdunham.com through Namecheap.com with their free WhoisGuard subscription. It cost me $10.87 (£6.90) for one year’s private registration. It was very easy and became active immediately. If I had not wanted anonymity I could have done it elsewhere for much less than that. I know others have done it for free using a .tk domain.

Well ! Private domain registration helps yo to hide your contact details from public eye during whois lookup by using any of the sites like WhoisXY.com

Thanks. I wanted to write up this tale because there seems to be so much confusion around about getting Adsense on both Blogger and YouTube. Regarding private registration, because I write about past events, people and places I wanted to anonymise things so that no one is embarrassed or offended.

Interesting !! infact i was looking for answers of all these, You listed well. !! I just began with youtube adsense account and looking for blogger URL aproval. May be need to purchase now !!Can you advice ? which direction is better for adsence earning ? youtube or webpage articles ?

Thanks. My YouTube videos generate more revenue than my blog or web pages, but I'm sure it depends on the content and how many hits and clicks you get. But it's only about a pound a month in total - my content is not especially commercial.

When someone writes an article he/she maintains the plan of a user in his/her brain that how a user can know it. Therefore that's why this piece of writing is amazing. Thanks! Visit my blog :: dress six months

Great! Tasker DunhamNow you already to use adsense in your blog or not?I'm newbies blogger from Thailand.My problem same you in first time and I have only 9 post ...http://lomkrodsp.blogspot.commaybe you can explain me, what 's wrong in my blog?

sailom - your blog looks good, but I can think of two possible issues: 1) the blog is not very old, you may have to wait a few months, 2) you are using a .blogspot address rather than your own domain. Also I don't know what the adsense policy is towards blogs in Thai script. Hope that helps. Good luck

Yes. I spend most of my time writing a memoir, when if I really wanted a lot of traffic and advertising revenue I should obviously be writing about technical things. For the record, my Adsense revenue after nearly one whole year has just reached £16, I have to wait until it is (I think) £60 before they pay out. If they ever do (and some sources say that is not always the case) then at least it will fund the domain fees.

Richard - your Astronomy and Space blog is awesome too. Love the video. May I suggest you do not post comments anonymously because they often get flagged as spam (along with all the links to dodgy Easter European web sites) and are therefore likely to be deleted.

Hy Tasker, though the post is off-topic as far as the blog goes, but the tale was really helpful to me. You are dedicated in your writing. This article is very effective for by blog site. Good job. Keep up your best dedication for us.

Hi, thanks for your great information! it was awesome to read. i'm also doing google Adsense for my website (https://www.bravetechnologies.in/)..i have one doubt.what is the difference between google adsense and PPC?

You really have to marvel at the persistence of spam marketeers. Why anyone would try to advertise a medical career consultancy on a blog post about adsense is beyond me. BTW I usually delete the most crass posts of this nature and have in any case disabled links within comments on this blog.

Thanks but I don't know how relevant my blog post now is since google's recent restriction to adsense advertising on YouTube. My channel, for one, was excluded for not reaching the threshold of 1,000 subscribers, despite meeting the other threshold of 4,000 viewing hours during the last year - it actually had over 20,000. I can't understand why google would not want to profit by allowing advertising on that. It's a poor commercial decision in my view.

As well as changes to AdSense on YouTube, the other recent change is that Blogger is gradually migrating from http to https, even for custom domains. I'm not yet sure what the implications of this are, but from reading around it seems that there are some.

After uploading a video to YouTube you have the option to mark it as VLog. This tells YouTube the playlist is a VLog in your YouTube channel. You will need to research things like channels and playlists to get a full grasp of this.After uploading a video to YouTube you have the option to mark it as VLog. This tells YouTube the playlist is a VLog in your YouTube channel. You will need to research things like cbuy youtube likeshannels and playlists to get a full grasp of this.

Many people complain they can't make money with AdSense or that it cheapens their site. I will show it how it will not only increase the value of your site, but how it will start building you monthly income!Shopify traffic

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About Me

This memoir is based on people, places, things and events I knew, with some names and details altered to avoid difficulties. I grew up in Yorkshire and worked in Leeds before going to university late, and then lived in various places around the U.K. before moving back to Yorkshire where I now live with my wife and family. I have worked in accountancy, computing and higher education, as well as in temporary jobs in factories. I tend to post two or three times each month.